No information available on Misinformation Combat Alliance receiving approval to be SRO for fact-checkers: IT Ministry

In April this year, an EconomicTimes report claimed that the IT Ministry had given the go-ahead to the Misinformation Combat Alliance (MCA) to set up a self-regulatory organization (SRO) for Indian fact-checkers for non-government-related content.

However, there is no law that allows the government to approve an SRO for fact-checkers. The recently amended IT Rules only allow the government to notify a fact-checking unit for government-related news.

We reached out to the Alliance back in April asking the following questions:

1. Under which law is the government giving this approval?
2. What will be the powers of this SRO and its members?
3. Will content flagged as fake by the members of this SRO need to be taken down by social media intermediaries (as is the case with the government fact-check unit under the amended IT Rules, 2021)?

MCA dodged our questions and responded that it “will adopt a multi-stakeholder consultative approach and work on developing a framework which includes principles and standards for independent, non-partisan and transparent fact-checking within the next hundred and twenty days. Deliberations with stakeholders to discuss the same will begin soon.”

We then filed a Right to Information (RTI) request with the IT Ministry in May asking the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology if it has given any permission to the Misinformation Combat Alliance to set up a SRO for Indian fact-checkers.

The Ministry responded to this RTI in late June stating that “no information is available” on this question. This response suggests that no official permission has been given to any organization to act as an SRO for fact-checkers.

This comes as a relief as the ET report had suggested that MCA would have the same powers as the government fact-check unit under the recent IT Rules amendment, which means the fact-checkers registered with MCA would have had the power to label content as fake or false, and social media platforms would have been expected to take down any such labelled content. If they didn’t, they would have lost safe harbour protections. This was worrying because such broad powers could lead to censorship by a private organization and threaten the freedom of speech and expression.

We asked MCA on September 19 if they had an updated response to the questions posed above and if they had any comments on the RTI response we received. The Alliance did not respond to the specific questions but shared the following statement:

“The MCA has been working hard to build a framework and structure for the fact-checking network we propose to set up. At this point, we are still poring over specifics. It has taken us longer than we anticipated, but once we have all the things in place, we would be able to share more specific details. We expect to complete this soon.”

Update (September 19, 4:55 pm): Added dates for when we received responses from MCA and our RTI.

Update (September 21, 10:30 am): Added MCA’s latest response

Also Read

• SRO For Fact-Checkers Reportedly Gets Government’s Nod, But Under Which Law?
• Indian Government Can Now Fact Check And Censor Any News Related To The Government: Amended IT Rules
• Govt’s Fact-Check Amendment Disproportionately Infringes On Free Speech Online, Lawyers Inform Bombay HC
• Establishing Independent Bodies To Assist Gov With Online Fact-Checking: Karnataka IT Min Priyank Kharge